Teaching Children Reading and Writing
As a parent, teaching your child to read and write is one of the most important things that you will do for them. Through taking the time to do this before they go to school, and continuing to offer support while they are there, you can help your child to have the foundations necessary to learn, share and communicate with others.
Teaching a child to read and write is a harder task than many parents expect, not least time consuming. Many parents are concerned about trying to introduce their child to reading at too young an age, below 4 years old, however this is not something to worry about – the truth is that it can only help.
When you are starting to teach your child how to read, you should not concentrate on pronouncing capital letters first. The reason for this is that learning lower case letters is easier to aid learning how to read. This is because lower case letters represent how one speaks, and through combining lower case letters you start to understand how you can formulate words stemming from them.
When you are teaching your child how to read and write, you should be careful to limit the vocabulary that you aim to teach. The more vocabulary that you introduce; the more confusion and the more overwhelming the situation will become.
When your child starts writing much the same applies as with reading. The key is to teach your child to associate a character with a sound, and therefore to be able to graphically represent the spoken word.
Teaching your child to read and write is something which should go beyond preparing them for going to school. Further more, through making reading a fun and recreational exercise for your child you can ensure that their reading skills and ability to digest information will be much greater than it otherwise would be.
